Because if we're going to try and stop the misuse of our favorite comics and their protagonists by the companies that write and publish them, we've got to see what both the printed and online comics news is doing wrong. This blog focuses on both the good and the bad, the newspaper media and the online websites. Unabashedly. Unapologetically. Scanning the media for what's being done right and what's being done wrong.

Friday, December 09, 2016

Is a 2nd Spidey book titled Renew Your Vows Marvel's attempt to apologize?

There's a new Spider-Man miniseries bearing the same name as the atrocity written by Dan Slott coming out, but this book is written by veteran Gerry Conway. This is something I didn't know clearly about a few months ago, but apparently, this was what J. Scott Campbell was doing his cover drawing for (so I've made an effort to edit a prior topic to note that), so he's clear on that matter. It basically puts Peter Parker and Mary Jane Watson back together, though it's also got some ideas that Spider-fans might still find superfluous.

Now could this be Marvel's theoretical admission they screwed up for over a decade, and an attempt to placate their detractors and the audience that abandoned them after they threw Mary Jane Watson under the bus? It's hard to say, and Joe Quesada/Axel Alonso's continued presence at Marvel could still drive people away, with good reason. Here's the description of what the new Renew Your Vows is about:

The mainstream Peter Parker may be facing dark times during The Clone Conspiracy, but classic Spidey writer Gerry Conway and artist Ryan Stegman are creating a version of Peter’s life where the last ten years look very different in the recently launched Amazing Spider-Man: Renew Your Vows.

Spinning out of a Secret Wars mini-series that weaved a world in which Peter Parker and Mary Jane Watson never split, Renew Your Vows continues the timeline of a very different – and happier – reality, complete with a whole family of crimefighters in Pete, MJ, and their daughter Annie.

But this isn’t just a surface level change – according to Conway, in the world of Renew Your Vows, not only did the entirety of Civil War not happen, the sweeping differences may go back to the original “Clone Saga” or even further.

There's just one little thing: should even the original Clone Saga remain canon? Those familiar with 1995's Spider-output know it was one of the most stunningly awful tales ever produced, knocking everyone's heads with the notion that Ben Reilly, the Spider-clone, had been in Peter Parker's shoes for nearly 2 decades. And there was also that matter of Peter taking out his anger on Ben via violent assault (which a scientist nearby made no attempt to stop), and resulted in Peter accidentally striking Mary Jane and wounding her. Even the attack on Ben Reilly alone was already offensive, making Peter out to look like he had no ability to solve anything without fisticuffs. It gave brawls in superhero comics a bad name. If I were in charge, I'd want to drop the whole Clone Saga from continuity, because it was nothing more than bad storytelling of the worst kind, and keeping it around doesn't improve anything. If it were dropped from canon, it wouldn't hurt one bit any more than if the Terminator movies ignored the 3rd entry along with Salvation. That's actually a good way to make the horizon more appealing for new entrants into readership.

Interestingly, during the interview to follow, artist Ryan Stegman (and by extension Conway too) seem to criticize Dan Slott's Inferior Dr. Octopus story from at least 2 years ago:

Nrama: Ryan, this is really your first time drawing the classic, original Peter Parker in an ongoing series. How do you approach him differently from the modern Peter, or from Otto Octavius in Peter’s body?

Stegman: I don’t really approach this Peter very differently from the modern, mainstream Peter, but I definitely approach him differently than the Superior Spider-Man version of Peter Parker. In that version, even when he was not in costume, he was always posing and sticking his chest out and being a real creep. And then when he’d fight, he was much about actually trying to hurt his opponent. The fights were bloodier, more vicious. So I’ve scaled that back to something more in line with Peter Parker. The only care Otto Octavius gave to Peter Parker was being in his body, so this is completely different.

Incredible. He's pointed out just some of the serious errors made in the past decade, many of which were surely deliberate. Another was the alarmingly poor treatment of Mary Jane, whom Slott once called "anti-Marvel". Worse was the storyline where Otto Octavius took advantage of Mary while he was in Peter's body. That's not something a writer/artist who wants to be seen as dignified and professional would sink into doing. So Stegman certainly deserves some credit for acknowledging that terrible mistakes were made, for practically two decades.

Nrama: Gerry, you wrote some incredibly formative stories for Peter, including “The Night Gwen Stacy Died.” How does it feel to do kind of the opposite of that story, writing a happily married Peter?

Conway: It’s obviously great fun. I never wanted Peter’s life to be miserable, it just sort of happened. Given where he was in his development as a character during “The Night Gwen Stacy Died,” it was appropriate for him at the time. But the great thing about Renew Your Vows is that we’re in an alternate universe, so we’re not bound by the weight of prior darkness. There’s certainly an element of darkness to Peter’s life because of the deaths that have occurred in it, but he’s been pretty happy for the last five or six years in our timeline.

He’s settled into a family routine, and to some degree, just as my early stories with Peter were a reflection of my adolescent angst as I wrote him – I was around the same age that the character was – Renew Your Vows reflects my experience with relationships from a more mature, adult perspective.

I'll give Conway some credit for taking a sensible approach to characterization here. But it's regrettable if he still holds fast to his ultra-leftist politics

Nrama: Following up on something you just said, the timeline of Renew Your Vows isn’t necessarily tied to any previous storylines. Aside from the obvious diverging point of “One More Day,” are there other differences in Peter’s past?

Conway: Oh yeah. My take on this, and Ryan, I think yours too, is that this is a universe where Civil War never happened. So Aunt May is dead, but she’s dead for a different reason. He didn’t expose his identity, he didn’t make the bargain with Mephisto, and the world doesn’t have the level of superhero conflict as worlds where Civil War took place.

For me, it feels thematically more like the Marvel of the mid-60s, where the rivalries weren’t life and death, they were more like disagreements. And in that context, things can be a little lighter, a little less gravelly. He still has Gwen Stacy’s death on his conscience, he has Uncle Ben’s death on his conscience, he feels bad about Aunt May, even though he doesn’t feel guilty for her death. But he’s not bound up in the kind of dark grief the 90s era gave us.

I’m not even sure there was a “Clone Saga” in this world. We haven’t gotten that far yet. We’ll see.

Stegman: It’s a different world. And I kind of prefer this one.

I wonder if this is their suggestion that this serve as a return to a time when established continuity was more coherent? Presumably, this is probably just the idea behind Conway/Stegman's miniseries. And they do suggest the Clone Saga was not only a terrible mistake, but one they'd do better to jettison from continuity.

Nrama: There are a few alternate Spider-Man timelines going on at Marvel right now. Why is this the right time to show an alternate take on Peter Parker that rolls back many of the changes in his story from the last ten years? Why is a story about Peter and MJ staying together important?

Conway: Because it’s a hopeful story. In a way, it’s weird that it came up now, because we’re in a very strange year, and this is almost an antidote to that. But there’s another thing I think is cool, which is that, since we have the cinematic versions of these characters redefining them and introducing or reintroducing them to people, we can now tell any story we want, even in the mainstream universe books. The obsession with continuity that drained the life out of comics in the 90s seems to have abated, so we’re more about telling stories that are of interest to a wider audience than with connecting the dots for a smaller devoted core group of fans. Obviously we want to stay true to the history of these characters and be faithful to what makes them special, but the idea of different universes is terrific and liberating. We’re not bound by the straitjacket of continuity.

Trouble is, the obsession with milking continuity for all it's worth hasn't, at least not according to Quesada/Alonso, and the obsession with crossovers certainly hasn't abated. And those "fans" he speaks of? Why do I get the feeling they're fans in the true sense of the word? Otherwise, they'd never stick with the Spidey books after what Quesada did to them.

Conway says he doesn't know if this'll end up supplanting the phony continuity Slott's books go by. And the idea of Mary Jane becoming a superheroine herself will surely be divisive with some of the real Spider-fans with more respect for the characters' histories. But the wish to develop a book that's more in tune with what fans of Marvel's better interests want is something to appreciate. It's just a shame it has to be with Quesada/Alonso still around, because that - along with the lack of visible distribution and ridiculous cover prices for pamphlets that should've been replaced by paperbacks - is just why a lot of people may not go for the book regardless.

Thursday, December 08, 2016

3 more tweets by Marz post-election

About a month's passed since Donald Trump's election, and here's a few, quite saddening posts Ron Marz turned out, like this one where he sounds gleeful that Kellogg corporation withdrew ads from Breitbart because they hated their politics:

Oh, is that so? How do we know that even in Greece, a country that's sadly got problems with socialists these days, there aren't people who actually found it relieving that Trump was elected? I'm sure Marz didn't ask supporters of Geert Wilders and Marine Le Pen over in Holland and France either. This is definitely not a comment Marz made that should be taken at face value.

And let's not be surprised if Marz wants to write anti-Trump propaganda into his own comics in some way or other these coming 4 years. Which will only make them all the more worthless.

Wednesday, December 07, 2016

Slott predictably returns to Twitter, and continues his mindless babble

Just as should've been expected, Slott's reversed the cancellation of his Twitter account, and is back to being the ultra-leftist he's remained in perpetuity. Some of his dreary drivel includes the following:

People who believe that today's comic book writers shouldn't have political opinions or express them, would've really hated...

...how comics took a stand against Nazis before America entered WW2.

Or comics that took political stances in the 60's, 70's, 80's, and 90's.

Naturally, there's no distinctions to be made. Like how, in contrast to WW2, today's leftist writers like Slott don't want to help foreign countries find the same freedoms afforded to Americans. I have no doubt Slott was amongst the crowd opposing the Iraq war and removal of Saddam from his dictatorial positions. Why do I get the feeling Slott wouldn't approve of the true reason for fighting WW1 in 1914-18, which was to defeat not just Germany prior to WW2, but also the Islamic Ottoman empire, which was guilty of slaughtering 1.5 million Armenians? Does he even care that Turkey's Islamofascists today still won't apologize?

Let's ponder: the barrage of extreme anti-war positions and other nasty modern leftist politics may be just what got people so fed up they're not interested in just leaving leftist politics out of stories, but also rightist politics. But you just can't expect somebody like Slott to admit that.

He also said:

Writers write what they're passionate about. They don't sacrifice good stories for political views. At times they write 'em BECAUSE of them. https://t.co/8Je0UiBXIV

Sorry, but writers like Slott do sacrifice good storytelling for the sake of their politics. Mainly by shoving them in the readers' faces so hard, it makes it hard to enjoy anything else. Even before Slott, there was Scott Lobdell, who threw good storytelling out the window for the sake of telling everybody to just accept homosexuality as "normal" in the pages of Alpha Flight. Namely, he hammered it, as seen similarly in X-Men in early 2001.

So glad @realDonaldTrump cares enough about our economy to tweet out a LIE about a major American company & make its stock price jump around

Yeah, as if previous presidents never spent as much. Just take a look atthese articles abouthow much Obama spent. Leftists like Slott are always looking for every excuse they can think of and find to attack somebody they don't agree with. And it's clear he's going to continue with this nonsense for a long time to come.

I conducted this interview a few weeks before the US elections took place. As a black Canadian Muslim woman, I’m fearful for the marginalized groups in America right now and what this means for the world. Many of my friends are scared, sad, angry, distressed and some are even hopeless. [...]

How classic, making it sound like everybody is nothing more than a nervous wreck. Anybody who makes such a fuss over politics so badly does nothing to improve anything. The Muslim Ms. Marvel book - which is far from popular if it sells so much lower than 40,000 copies at store level only - will probably wind up doing attacks on Trump so long as it's still around, much like it did with Bernie Sanders.

After debuting with a roar in 2014, Ms. Marvel cultivated a fanbase before a single issue came out, and now the collections are fixtures in book stores. I wanted to talk about Islam because as a Muslim reader, I wanted to get to the heart of one Marvel’s biggest superheroes; a teenage Pakistani-American Muslim girl from Jersey City.

She's only made this whole piece quite a giggler. The only people who make such a big deal out of it are leftists who want to promote dishonesty, and it makes no difference to them how low it actually sells, even in book stores. The interview continues with her denial that this was ever intended as propaganda:

I think there was sort of two camps in terms of expectations of what the series would be. One camp was like, “Oh, it’s gonna be token diversity. It’s just going to be a model minority book. People are going to forget about it after five issues.” So there was kind of that and then on the other side there was, “Oh, it’s going to be Islamic propaganda. It’s going to promote sharia law in the USA. It’s part of like the global conspiracy of Islamic jihad” or whatever. So you know there were those two extremes and what we wanted to do was something completely different. Something that felt very authentic and I think we would not have been able to get there if there were not two Muslim women involved. I think it could not have happened in the way it happened without Sana.

I guess it's not election propaganda either, huh? Taqqiya (deception) and denial that disapproval in Islam that a woman go without a headscarf is just the propaganda they deny they set out to do. Any book where the lead has a bad religion ascribed to her background doesn't qualify as "model" either, though there is quite a bit about the development that reeks of tokenism. She continues her taqqiya with the following:

I thought from the beginning that she should not wear the hijab. I mean she wears it in the mosque obviously and at certain cultural functions but I did not want to make her like a hijabi in her day-to-day life simply because the majority of teenage Pakistani-American girls do not wear a hijab. So even though I wear a hijab – I’ve worn the hijab for most of my adult life – I thought, “You know what? Let’s make this representative. Let’s not, again, do some sort of model minority book or make her sort of this perfect caricature of what we think a Muslim girl looks like.

And stuff about her family. We didn’t want to shy away from conflict but at the same time we wanted to show love and affection. Just the basic day-to-day family scenes that we don’t see a lot of in depictions of American Muslim families. Where it’s not always politically charged stuff. There’s a diversity of thought and opinion. That not everybody in the same family believes or acts in the same way and that was very important. That was at the heart of shaping her civilian identity.

Uh, is she sure of that? Maybe more to the point, is she claiming Muslim men from any background don't exist in any number who dictate what a woman may or may not wear, or that there aren't Muslim women who're either scared, or indoctrinated enough and lack self-esteem? And even if they don't wear a hijab, that doesn't mean they still don't adhere to any other awful beliefs. Next thing you know, she'll be saying the majority of Satmar women don't wear wigs and even cut away their hair just because the degrading leadership dictates it.

She also fails to acknowledge that we don't always see what can happen in a Muslim family where the father - and mother - can be abusive, and commithonor murders. Indeed, if she's claiming the vast majority of Muslim family portraits in showbiz is literally bad, that's naive and dishonest too. The interviewer then goes on to note:

Fun fact: That first issue of Ms. Marvel… I read it and it didn’t sit well with me specifically because Kamala makes a joke about bacon. That “Mmm… infidel meat” moment and immediately in my head, I’m like, “A Muslim wouldn’t say that. That makes no sense. Why would we ever say, ‘oooh, pork smells amazing or bacon does.” It wasn’t until I read issue two and let some time pass that I realized what I wanted out of Kamala was an ideal. I wanted her to be the perfect Muslim so that… less for me because I myself am not the perfect Muslim. I don’t wear the hijab and I personally struggle with that in terms of what that means to me. So I’m definitely not the perfect muslim and it was weird to expect that from Kamala. Then I realized it [the ideal] wasn’t really for Kamala or even for myself but mostly for other people because Kamala was supposed to tell other people, “Look, this is what a muslim is. We’re not terrible.”

GWW: We’re not supposed to be flawed.

AO: Yeah.

Are they saying they're supposed to be saints? Well it sure comes close to that. She goes further with her ignorance in the following:

GWW: There’s so much scrutiny on the community that it’s like you can’t put a foot wrong. You have to be the perfect American. The perfect Muslim. Never question anything. Do the right thing always and I see people breaking under that pressure because it’s not fair. Especially younger kids who’ve grown up in the post-9/11 world. It’s like they’re carrying the honour of the whole community on their shoulders. They always have to be upright and be the perfect Muslim. It’s something to me… we had to push against it somehow. We have to make it okay to be flawed. You shouldn’t have to be a perfect Muslim or a perfect American to feel safe. You should be allowed to be flawed. An important part of creating Kamala was to say… She’s not flawed in the sense of being morally flawed but flawed in terms of having things that you do well and having things that you do not so well. It’s a big issue and there is that burden of representation where you’re sort of… there’s this pressure to lose particularity of experience to get to some sort of universality that doesn’t actually exist.

Unfortunately, she fails to acknowledge that many Muslims do believe you have to be perfect in every way. It can be like that in ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities too; they expect you to follow the customs they dictate perfectly, even though it's idiotic to think one can follow everything on the dot to perfection. Interestingly, the interviewer also notes:

With Ms. Marvel as a superhero and a Muslim, I wonder if you find yourself negotiating with religion like with particular story elements. Do you go, “Man if I write about this magical mischievous Loki… well, should I?” Because some people could be like, “Ugh, magic”. Magic has this place in Islam… it’s kind of frowned upon. As a Muslim woman who is also a writer, I’ve wondered about that.

GWW: It’s an interesting balancing act and sometimes I’ll get these snarky questions on Twitter like, “How could you be a Muslim writer and write about… in the marvel universe, there are gods…” and I’m like… number one, even within the Marvel universe, the Asgardians don’t consider themselves as actual gods. That’s one. Number two, in Islam, anything with a body that can be killed is by definition not god. I feel like comics are, in many ways, in the vein a lot of classical Islamic fantasies like the Alif Laila [aka The Arabian Nights or One Thousand and One Nights], The Conference of the Birds and a lot of that older stuff where there is sorcery in the world and genies and communing with the unseen. It’s frowned upon but it’s there and it’s also part of something larger.

No matter how much they themselves may deny it, there are Muslims out there who not only abhor magic (and by extension, Tales of the Arabian Nights because of its own magical stories), they even conducted witch hunts. Though theoretically, belief in magic does exist in various Muslim countries, a lot of clerics condemn it, and/or view the concept of magic negatively. So there may be another reason why some Muslim may not even read a book set in a world involving magic and sci-fi.

Disappointing that she did a storyline in Pakistan and didn't address the persecution of religious minorities but I guess that would clash with the softball narrative she's pushing.

Yup, there's people out there who aren't fooled one bit. In fact, was this interview even aimed at a wide, diverse audience? I get the weird feeling it wasn't, and ultimately, it's just a lot of boring hot air, that doesn't get anywhere.

He does live in Florida, which went GOP this year. In any case, does this signal he's come to his senses? I sure hope so, because any artist/writer who lets politics get the better of them is not doing their reputation any good. If Perez has turned around and realized the mistake he was making before, I'm relieved. Any creators who really cherish the profession they're in would do well to refrain from getting involved in too many political issues, because ultimately, it doesn't benefit anybody for the better, not even folks of the same positions as they have. So, here's hoping Perez will take the time to visit conventions in other states voting GOP this coming year.

Friday, December 02, 2016

There may never be a sequel to Roger Rabbit...because of his wife?

Robert Zemeckis says there'll probably never be a sequel to his notable 1988 combination of live action and animation, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, but not because Bob Hoskins is now deceased. Rather, it might have what to do with the anthropomorph's sexy wife, even though they don't seem to like the husband either:

Even though the script exists, the director thinks it’s exceedingly unlikely it will ever be shot, since Disney owns the rights to it, and “the current corporate Disney culture has no interest in Roger, and they certainly don’t like Jessica at all.”

We can only guess why. She's drawn too voluptuously for their tastes. And this is probably nothing new either. After the original movie, there were a handful of cartoon features produced starring Roger (one installment was titled "Tummy Trouble"), but afterwards, all the buzz collapsed and Disney Corp. never made any attempt to capitalize on it in the years following, even though it was produced through the Touchstone studio affiliate, and wasn't intended as mere children's stuff, but a film for older viewers. In today's SJW-infected climate, the biggest problem is that tasteful presentations of heterosexuality are considered abominable. Yet homosexuality is allowed, no matter how distasteful that is by contrast. The most galling thing is that the SJWs actually agree with Frederic Wertham in the worst selective ways possible. Quite a few of the commenters to this article on Yahoo seem to understand what's going on, and one said:

YES DISNEY, KIDS SHOULD BE EXPOSED TO TRANSGENDERS AND GAYS INSTEAD!!! MUCH MORE HEALTHY!!!!!

Another said:

Now if Jessica was a Tranny, they would be all about it.

Being aware of their MO today, yeah, they probably would. Another quoted a notable line from the mouth of the cartoon lady in the film:

"I'm not bad, I'm just drawn that way" - love Jessica Rabbit

The sheer irony is that today's Disney executives take both dim views. Another said:

Now that's a weird double-standard, right? And again, Who Framed Roger Rabbit is supposed to be aimed at older audiences, not tots.

To be fair, a sequel to Roger Rabbit would probably fail in any event because it's been nearly 3 decades since it was produced, and not many people may care about it now, even if they liked it the first time around. And there's no telling if the script Zemeckis wrote is as entertaining either. But to refuse one simply because they think Jessica Rabbit is toxic - and consider the anthropomorphic star of the show equally crappy - is idiotic and far from a good business model.

The timing couldn't be worse for Bobby Drake to get a solo book

Although he’s one of the original X-Men created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, Iceman was seen until recently as the X-Man who had changed the least since his first appearance. Over the decades, Bobby’s four other “O5” teammates saw their share of evolution. The Beast mutated into a blue and furry creature, Jean Grey became the godlike Phoenix, Angel became the razor-winged Archangel of Death, and Cyclops became a militant political leader. All the while, Iceman pretty much just stayed “that jokey dude who could make stuff out of ice.” But, as was revealed last year in Uncanny X-Men #600, it turns out Iceman had been hiding the fact that he was gay.

Uh, pardon me, what's that? Mistake number one: if it was never established before, they cannot say it was "revealed" that Iceman was gay. It was only retconned/altered to suit the SJW mindset in the past year or so. There's a difference, and they fail to recognize that.

I recently got the chance to chat with series writer Sina Grace and series editor Daniel Ketchum about Iceman finally earning the spotlight, and what to expect from his first ever ongoing series.

LGBT comics fans had long suspected that Bobby Drake was gay, based on evidence from years of X-Men stories. In fact, editor Daniel Ketchum confirmed that these years of fan theories played heavily into Marvel officially outing Bobby for real. “I wasn’t involved entirely in the story at that point,” Ketchum said. “But [former X-Men writer] Brian Michael Bendis was very wise to identify that all those threads that existed. We’re not in the business of pulling something out of nowhere and slapping it on to a character so he fits some quota, or for the sake of telling some story. This had to come from somewhere, and it did. And now wonderful talents like [series writer] Sina Grace get to take that storyline and move it forward.”

It's getting even more hilarious now. "Suspected"? Iceman is an imaginary character, just like Superman, and to put it that way merely perpetuates a lie. It's more a case of entitled "fans" wanting a particular character to have attributes they deem fit, and look for the easiest targets to exploit and foist their visions upon (hence the "theories" propaganda). All this completely ignores Bobby's affairs with several ladies (even Obsidian from Infinity Inc. was involved with a few), with Polaris being one example, and not just in the pages of X-Men: there was even a story in Amazing Spider-Man 92 from January 1971 where Bobby was seen on the street spending some time with a foxy girl before finding an excuse to send her home while he went to combat Spidey, who was being targeted by a crooked politician using Gwen Stacy as a pawn, and Bobby thought Spidey was hassling Gwen for no good reason. As he got the lady into a cab and ran off, he said, "I hated to do that! 'Specially after it took me weeks to finally get a date with her!" Which is at least half ignored by the interviewers (they admit further down in the article he was in heterosexual relations, but support the new direction anyway) so the new writers' position fits some quota, all for the sake of telling only the vision they see fit. Bendis was not wise at all to go that route; in fact, he was very stupid.

Grace added, “I think the tension of this is what makes this the most interesting and fun project to work on. Because it means that he’s been keeping something not only from his friends and colleagues, but also from himself. And if you even just look at his powers, it’s always just sort of been there, for the entire history of the Marvel universe. And leaning into it makes working on the character and understanding all the decisions he’s made to date that much more fascinating. And what he does with that information moving forward is going to inform not only his personal life, but also how he sees himself as a hero.”

No kidding! That's incredibly dumb to insinuate that the power of cold weather is somehow tied in to homosexuality, and a fictional character cannot keep anything from anyone. On the contrary, a writer can force it on the characters, and insult Kirby's memory with it.

Now, here's where they get to what they think will justify their new "direction":

But just because Bobby Drake is going through this big life change at the moment (an even more profound change when it happens later in life than when you are an adolescent), he’s still going to be the wisecracker we’ve known for years. Ketchum said, “We’re not going to lose sight that Bobby’s always been the comic relief, funny and jokey character. He’s not a ‘Gold Star Gay’ [a gay person who has never had heterosexual relationships]. So we’re going to be seeing a funny moment where he sees one of his exes. I really want Sina to put in the line, ‘So what was I, just your beard?’ There’s going to be an acknowledgement of it, but it’s gonna be played off in the tone that Bobby usually does. But Sina will bring a real authenticity to it.”

Ahem. Bobby, again, is an imaginary character, and was never even conceived as a "gold star gay". If he ends up telling one of his past girlfriends in this new rendition that he's going full time homosexuality, in a way that would make it sound like he'll never have heterosexual relations ever again, there's nothing funny about that, nor is there anything authentic. Let's be clear. There's hundreds of characters throughout superhero universes' history whose depictions were superficial, but that does not make them homosexual, nor does it serve any excuse for turning them that way. If it's really such a big deal, then they should create new cast members and not take steps that could ruin their wider appeal, commercial or otherwise.

As fans know, Iceman has dated Polaris, Opal Tanaka, and most recently, Kitty Pryde; all these relationships just sort of fizzled out, leading many fans to speculate over Bobby’s orientation. “Yeah, this part of his identity is going to effect the people around him, including some of his ex-girlfriends,” Grace said. “Part of the story and the adventures he has moving forward include the space where he does have a very touching interaction with one of the ladies, and we might have some more sprinkled in when it’s organic to the book. But that’s something that everyone can relate to, when you’re holding onto something for a long time, and that decision can have an impact on everyone around him.” (Who that first ex of Bobby’s is remains to be seen, but my money is on Kitty Pryde).

"Fizzled"? Umm, how come Superman's affairs with Lori Lemaris and Lana Lang, Spider-Man's with Betty Brant, and Batman's with Silver St. Cloud and Vicky Vale, can peter out and they can remain heterosexual, but Iceman can't? There's plenty of characters whose affairs with a lover of the opposite sex came to an end, if not forever, and whose sexual orientation was never even remotely questioned, yet somehow Bobby Drake's an exception? I don't see the logic here. They're fully oblivious to Stan Lee's idea that the "illusion of change" is the best way to go about these serial fiction concepts, and new relations can be established while older ones can be renewed later, all for the sake of their "progressive" pandering.

The real reason they're doing this with Iceman, I'd figure, is because he's often been a minor league hero at best, even within the X-Men pages, and so they think it easy to get away with what they may not succeed in doing with Iron Man. It's also the result of the X-Men franchise falling victim to SJWs hijacking certain series for their own narrow interests for many years. All this nonsense dates back at least 2 decades, because that's when Marvel began throwing quality writing out the window and leaving the series in the hands of otherwise terrible writers like Scott Lobdell and Fabian Nicieza. Indeed, scripters like them - certainly the former - were the kind of people who pandered to all the crowd we've since come to know as "social justice warriors" who only cared about themselves and their own narrow visions, and not anyone else's. And I wouldn't be surprised if not all of them even have any interest in buying and reading the upcoming books.

All people like Ketchum and Grace are doing is building on a self-important approach that embarrasses the source material, corrupting it into something it wasn't meant to be.

About me

I'm Avi Green

From Jerusalem, Israel

I was born in Pennsylvania in 1974, and moved to Israel in 1983. I also enjoyed reading a lot of comics when I was young, the first being Fantastic Four. I maintain a strong belief in the public's right to knowledge and accuracy in facts. I like to think of myself as a conservative-style version of Clark Kent. I don't expect to be perfect at the job, but I do my best.